Cohort moderation

[el8]

Does going to a public school ranked (just) in the top 150 give a disadvantage? Will my sacs be brought down? Thanks

[Reus]

Your SACs will not be brought down because of your school. However how well your school does.
Plus, apply for SEAS if it's an underrepresented school. Typically if considered for this scheme, as I have been led to believe, points will be given to increase your chances in getting in to your desired course.

[keltingmeith]

It's not the best situation, but it's still an alright one. If you can stay near the top of your cohort, and do really well on the exam, you should be fine.

The biggest thing to take away is to not let your school's position determine how well or how bad you do. My school from last year is now ranked 276, and there were still people (like myself) who walked away with good marks (even having one kid who got a 99.25). In fact, to memory my SAC marks for all my subjects (minus music, but that's not because of my school, investigation just has a crap scaling system) were either consistent or higher than expected (this only happened in specialist, though).

[Zealous]

I go to a public school which is ranked between 350-400. Last year with Methods and Further I made the choice that I didn't want my SACs be brought down if my cohort didn't perform very well on exams so I just worked as hard as I could to get a good ranking.

That being said, the VCAA moderation system is really complicated and I wouldn't worry about it too much as you can get tied up with it and lose focus on where you should be spending your time.

I posted this in the Biology sub-forum recently:

Just focus on doing your best at this stage. The moderation that VCAA does can be good for some and bad for others, but I realised from doing Further last year (where people freak out about one mark) that it's not worth worrying about.

Sure it's nice to have the added security of a certain ranking, but really, you can gain that same security by focussing on doing extra revision or more practice for exams. Remember that the exams make up the majority of your study score.

[keltingmeith]

Your SACs will not be brought down because of your school. However how well your school does.
Plus, apply for SEAS if it's an underrepresented school. Typically if considered for this scheme, as I have been led to believe, points will be given to increases your chances in getting to your desired course.

Just to clarify, "under-represented" doesn't refer to your school's "rank". It actually refers to the amount of people who choose to go to that specific university from your school. Using Melbourne as an example, if less than 61% of people from your school enrol in a university, and of that 61% less than 14% enrol at Melbourne, then your school is considered under-represented at Melbourne. However, you might not be under-represented at Monash, meaning that SEAS won't benefit you if try for Monash, but they will if you try for Melbourne. If you want to know if your school is under-represented, the university in question might have a list up that you can refer to.

[pi]

I'll repeat this again...

DON'T PLAY A NUMBERS GAME, PLAY A "DO THE BEST I CAN" GAME

^truth to VCE success.

[Reus]

Just to clarify, "under-represented" doesn't refer to your school's "rank". It actually refers to the amount of people who choose to go to that specific university from your school. Using Melbourne as an example, if less than 61% of people from your school enrol in a university, and of that 61% less than 14% enrol at Melbourne, then your school is considered under-represented at Melbourne. However, you might not be under-represented at Monash, meaning that SEAS won't benefit you if try for Monash, but they will if you try for Melbourne. If you want to know if your school is under-represented, the university in question might have a list up that you can refer to.

Yeah! That's why I said "if it's an underrepresented school" haha implying el8 should check if it is or not.
Thanks for the in-depth clarification though, did not know that!

[el8]

Just to clarify, "under-represented" doesn't refer to your school's "rank". It actually refers to the amount of people who choose to go to that specific university from your school. Using Melbourne as an example, if less than 61% of people from your school enrol in a university, and of that 61% less than 14% enrol at Melbourne, then your school is considered under-represented at Melbourne. However, you might not be under-represented at Monash, meaning that SEAS won't benefit you if try for Monash, but they will if you try for Melbourne. If you want to know if your school is under-represented, the university in question might have a list up that you can refer to.

 Just looked at the underrepresented schools for UoM and my school is not there. Does this mean I go to a good enough school and should forget cohort moderation  ?? Haha

[keltingmeith]

It either means not enough students are going to uni, too many are going to uni, or too many are going to Melbourne. You should definitely forget about cohort moderation, though, until you get your ATAR, hahah.

Also: being an under-represented school isn't the only thing you can put on your SEAS application. When it comes time to do VTAC, look into SEAS a bit more, you might find something else you qualify for.

[el8]

Thanks everyone!!!